"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

"It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?--Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Nixon Redux?

“The President of the United States confers with his team on any number of personnel decisions,” [Kellyanne Conway] said. “You want to question the timing of when he hires, when he fires — it’s inappropriate.”

So we should just applaud the President's every decision, and never question any of them? And replacing the director of the FBI when the FBI is investigating the conduct of the President's campaign, is just a "personnel decision"? We aren't talking about the White House janitor, here. Aside from that, there is the question every murder mystery asks: "What was the motive?"

“Basically [Trump] is saying, ‘I’m firing Comey for doing the things that got me elected because I’m afraid people are going to find out who did the rest of the things to get me elected’,” the [senior law enforcement] official said.
....
The official is certainly not convinced that Trump was disturbed by Comey’s departure from the usual Department of Justice protocol in his pursuit of the president’s political opponent.

“If that’s the case, then why the f—- did you wait five and a half months to fire him?” the official asked. “The real reason is he’s inching closer to Trump. He’s getting uncomfortably close to people who are uncomfortably close.”

And in slightly other news:

Meanwhile, an official who was at FBI headquarters on Tuesday tried to joke off the late afternoon shock, asking: “Does the president have the power to fire the FBI director?”

He answered: “President Putin can fire anybody. If Putin can put Trump in the White House, he can get rid of the FBI director."

Is that too harsh? Really? The President wrote three tweets to deride a sitting Senator of the United States:

And there is a spreadsheet of all the Twitter responses from Congress about this firing. A quick scan reveals Democratic responses exceed Republican ones by a wide margin. There are 18 GOP responses, by my count, 168 from Democrats. A few GOP responses are critical, more are supportive, but by and large, Republicans are silent. Even among the 18, most are anodyne references to a carefully prepared statement.

I suppose if this were happening in another country they'd be more emboldened.